Tests for Kindergarten: Relaxing the Screening

By KATE STONE LOMBARDI

Published: July 15, 1990

UNTIL this year, about 225 4- and 5-years-olds were routinely given a developmental screening to test their readiness to enter the Katonah-Lewisboro school system kindergartens. But for this fall's kindergarten class, the test will be voluntary, as the appropriateness and the reliability of the standardized test has been increasingly called into question.

The purpose of the prekindergarten screening is to spot developmental delays, emotional difficulties and any physical limitations in the child. Results can be used to provide guidance to kindergarten teachers who can then work on a child's problems during the year.

But the screening has also been used to hold back children who are developmentally slow from entering kindergarten that year - ostensibly to protect them from being placed in a program that might prove too demanding.

As a result, many educators now argue that kindergarten screening actually compounds the problem it is trying to solve, because as more and more developmentally ''unready'' children are held back, the kindergarten curriculum accelerates. Once the province of milk, cookies and finger painting, kindergarten has become much more scholastically focused - what some educators consider a kind of boot camp for the first grade.

'Removing the Pressure'

Dr. Robert Lichtenfeld, assistant superintendent of the Katonah-Lewisboro school system, is one who agrees. ''Our kindergarten had become highly academic,'' he said.

Kindergarteners in the district had studied a strongly phonics-oriented reading program, worked with 28 letter books and completed practice work sheets. The main reason the school district dropped the kindergarten screening, said Dr. Lichtenfeld, was because of a change in the kindergarten program itself. The current program is more developmentally oriented. Teachers read to the children, children make up stories and the class is less structured.

''We want to stimulate children while removing the pressure,'' Dr. Lichtenfeld said. ''We think any child who is age-appropriate should be successful in our kindergarten program. With our shift in practice, we felt an entrance exam was no longer relevant.''

Dr. Lichtenfeld also cited research that calls into question the reliability of the test results themselves. The screening that had been used in the district is known as the Gesell School Readiness Screening Test. Developed in 1922 by Dr. Arnold Gesell, who founded the Yale Clinic of Child Development in New Haven, the screen is based on his theory that children develop in comprehensible patterns but at different rates. Four areas of development are evaluated: social skills, language development, motor skills and adaptive behavior. The test is administered by a trained adult unknown to the child.

Samuel J. Meisels, an education professor at the University of Michigan, wrote in the journal Young Child in 1987 that Gesell tests ''are based on an outmoded theory of child development, lack reliability and validity, and use a concept of developmental age that has never been empirically verified.'' Dr. Meisels also questioned the predictive validity of the tests.

Critics of readiness testing also point out that because preschool children develop so rapidly, they can easily be mislabeled. And any labeling can have ''long-term negative effects on self-esteem,'' said a statement by the National Association for the Education of Young Children, an advocacy group based in Washington.

''Basically, with one 20-minute test in a darkened gymnasium, you can deprive a child of a full year of schooling,'' said Sue Bredekamp, director of professional development for the association.

Although the association supports the use of standardized tests to diagnose children's developmental problems, it opposes testing for kindergarten readiness.

But administrators at the Gesell Institute defend the readiness test, and recommend that school districts offer an alternative program for kindergarten-age children who are developmentally slow, as well as the more common ''pre-first'' programs already in place.

Preventing Failures

''In the last few years there has been a lot of what we call 'Gesell bashing,' '' said Dr. Louise Ames, co-founder of the Gesell Institute. ''But the fact remains that not all 5-year-olds behave like 5-year-olds, and now that kindergarten is more academic, a child needs to be at a fully 5-year-old capacity to be successful.

''If you give a test for adequacy, some children are not going to be adequate, and they should be kept back. But parents who are insecure and defensive will say that no kid of mine is going to be held back.

''People today are objecting not just to the Gesell test but to any evaluation of their children. What they don't seem to understand is that you can prevent half of school failures by giving these children extra time at the beginning.''

No matter what kindergarten screening results reveal, state law says that an elementary school must accept any child into kindergarten who was born on or before Dec. 1 of the appropriate year. In fact, the majority of Katonah-Lewisboro parents whose children showed developmental delays chose to send their children to kindergarten anyway, despite recommendations to the contrary by the school system, Dr. Lichtenfeld said.

Parents chose to disregard the test results for a variety of reasons: some disagreed with the test's findings, others felt their children would mature developmentally over time and still others needed supervision for their children. Screening critics point out that while keeping a child in preschool or at home for an extra year is an option for middle-class families, it places a financial strain on low-income families.

Kindergarten Red-Shirts

Some parents of children who perform well on the kindergarten screening and can afford to do so choose to keep their children in preschool an extra year anyway, particularly if the child is a boy and has a ''late birthday'' in the fall or early winter. The decision is usually based on the belief that if the child is older he will perform better socially and academically.

The trend is known in academic circles as ''kindergarten red-shirting,'' after the college practice of having an athlete skip sports for a year to preserve eligibility for a later, higher level of performance. One result is often a class of both 5- and 6-year-olds and yet a further acceleration of the kindergarten program.

Most Westchester school districts use some form of screening: some use the Gesell screen; Chappaqua uses a similar test called Developmental Indicators for the Assessment of Learning, Revised; and the Lakeland School System has developed its own screening, using components from several tests. In Scarsdale, no standardized test is used: each child meets with the school psychologist for 30 minutes, has his or her vision and hearing checked by the school nurse and is observed while having a special prekindergarten afternoon of stories and crafts with the kindergarten teacher.

'It Was Very Threatening'

Rachel Rose, a kindergarten teacher at the Increase Miller Elementary School in Katonah-Lewisboro, said another drawback to the prekindergarten screening is that it ''was the first exposure that parents and children have to the school.''

''For many of them, it was very threatening,'' she said. ''They felt their children were being evaluated by a stranger before they were even in the district.

''Parents have generally reacted positively to doing away with the test. But if parents are unsure if their children are ready to enter kindergarten, the screening is still something we make available to them as an option. It's one more piece of information.''